Bibliothèques Sans Frontières (BSF), known as Libraries Without Borders (LWB) in English, is a charitable organisation based in France that provides access to information and education for those who need it most, whether refugees in humanitarian crises or under-resourced communities in the developed world.
After building libraries in relief camps throughout Haiti, Bibliothèques Sans Frontières developed best practices to promoting access to information and cultural resources in post-disaster contexts.
In 2013, BSF partnered with Philippe Starck to design a kit that would make it easier to set up libraries in disaster zones and areas affected by conflict.
It has been used in a variety of contexts, including refugee and IDP camps, demobilization zones, inner cities, rural areas, and anywhere that people are without access to information and resources for learning.
The principal objective of the organization is to allow the communities made vulnerable by natural catastrophes to stay in contact with the rest of the world, to strengthen education, and to provide psycho-social support.
[6] In the same spirit, Bibliothèques Sans Frontières intervenes in refugee situations around the world; thus following the Syrian crisis of 2012, BSF was active in Germany, Italy, and Greece, but also Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon.
The goals of these interventions are to rethink libraries such that they become financially sustainable and socially meaningful (supporting shared values, proposing activities for communities in unfavorable conditions, etc.).
The Ideas Box is a mobile, autonomous, and durable media center in a kit created in 2013 by BSF with the designer Philippe Starck and with the support of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees that provides educational and cultural resources, both physical and digital, to communities in need.
The Ideas Box is used in humanitarian and post-conflict situations to provide information and education,[9] and delivers access and resources to underserved communities in industrialized countries.
BSF uses the Ideas Box in places touched by natural disasters or armed conflicts, including Burundi,[11] but also among under-privileged and marginalized communities in the developed world.
Digital Travelers (Les Voyageurs du numérique) is a program that provides to children and adults free workshops on computer literacy.
In France, the board is composed of 19 members: Patrick Weil, Olivier Bassuet, Peter Sahlins, Véronique Brachet, Geneviève Brisac, Ghislaine Hudson, Jean-Baptiste Soufron, Julien Serignac, Constance Rivière, Farid Benlagha, Arnaud Delalande, Christian Connan, Mary Fleming, Antoine Boulay, Thierry Marembert, Silvère Mercier, Eros Sana, Anna Soravito, and Frédéric Régent.
The French association is the leader of the Bibliothèques Sans Frontières network, with its seat in Montreuil (just outside Paris), and its book collection center at Épône in the Yvelines department.
This communiqué included a petition signed by thousands of people including Éliette Abecassis, Christophe Deloire, Sara Yalda, Abd Al Malik, Geneviève Brisac, Laure Kermen-Lecuir, Valérie Lasserre Kiesow, Pierre Vesperini, Gérard Grunberg, Yerri Urban, Romain Dambre, Paul Egre, Nicole Caligaris, Vincent Chabault, Arnaud Delalande, Thomas Perroud, Laurent Joly, Ghislaine Hudson, Frédéric Barbier, Evelyne Bloch-Dano, Emmanuelle Saulnier-Cassia and Thomas Hochmann.
Among the signatories of the proposition were Éliette Abecassis, Pierre Assouline, Olivier Barrot, Evelyne Bloch-Dano, Geneviève Brisac, Catherine Cusset, Dany Laferrière, Erik Orsenna, Bernard Pivot, Lilian Thuram, Emmanuel Todd, and Benjamin Stora.